Live at the Beacon, an early bootleg from 1971 by the band Elf when Doug Thaler was still in the band and they were known as the Elves, is one of the most interesting live recordings I have ever come across. It's a raw document with no fancy post-production wizardry or sonic massaging. It's a snapshot of a band on the eve of being discovered.
The roots of Elf stretch back to 1958 or so, when 16-year old Ronald Padavona adopted the gangster handle "Ronnie Dio" and assembled a band around him called the Red Caps, which released two singles. Although known for most of his career as a vocalist, Dio initially play bass and trumpet and provided backing vocals on the first single, then took over as lead vocalist for the second single. In the early 1960's, perhaps to reflect some of the gradual changes happening to the band, the Red Caps became the Prophets, who performed mostly cover songs, but also some original material that reflected the times fairly well (e.g. Beatlemania, psych rock). In 1967 they released a psych-rock single with a new name, the Electric Elves. Although they were effectively the same band as what the Prophets were at that time, Dio's role was equalized with the rest of the group, with the "Ronnie &" prefix removed. Also it was the first time Dio was using his actual last name, something he would continue to do through the first Elf album.
What the future held for the Electric Elves was blown apart in a car accident that killed guitarist Nick Pantas, who had been with Dio since the beginning, and seriously injured pretty much the whole rest of the band, in particular Dio and multi-instrumentalist Doug Thaler. The band eventually reconvened around 1970 as just "The Elves" with Mickey Lee Soule stepping in on keyboards while Thaler continued to heal. Eventually Thaler would rejoin as a second guitarist, while Soule remained on the keys. During this time a major rift was developing between the band's studio sound and their live shows. The two officially released "Elves" singles were in many ways a step backward into schmaltzy pop and the unreleased material featured in the "War Pigs '72/Live at the Bank" bootleg was fairly tame. Meanwhile on stage the band was tearing things up with cover material of hard rock bands and a liberal dose of their own new, harder-edged songs. This brings us to the Beacon in upstate New York, 1971.
From what I can deduce the Beacon set, which may not be the complete show and almost certainly has had any song introductions cut out, consists of two covers ("Aqualung" and "Simple Sister") and five originals. None of the originals have songwriting credits (usually Dio or Thaler wrote them), so it is possible they are obscure cover songs. It's clear that Thaler is with the band again because there are two guitars playing on most every track (compared to the Bank set, which is just Dave "Rock" Feinstein alone). Dio handles about 75% of the vocals, and I'm pretty sure the other singer, who is much more range-restricted, is Feinstein, though Soule and Thaler have done vocal work at other points in the Elf timeline. "The Scramblers" is a beast of an opening track with all talents on display. The second track, "Driftin'" was probably the showcase song and the only song in the set that has a studio version (from the Bank bootleg). Unlike the studio version, it includes a freaked out bridge nicknamed informally "I Can Take It" featuring Rock on vocals. After the cover of "Aqualung" (a solid performance, but nothing super-special), the band gets a little more laid-back with blues/country style songs "36 Year Old Lady" and "Mountain Venus". The former song edges into novelty territory and mostly has Rock on vocals, though Dio does the bridge, which is a medley of old blues/R&B stuff like "Stormy Monday". The other one seems a little bit Red State, but the band wasn't one to restrict themselves genre-wise, and it actually isn't much of a stretch from many of the songs from the first Elf album, released to following year. "Simple Sister" is a Procol Harum cover, but with a much more stretched out bridge featuring some impressive constructions by Soule and Feinstein. Finally, the set ends (or at least the album ends) with a 17-minute multi-part epic called "The Rape of Andre Lucia". Let me tell you, this is a crazy ride, just a tale about the end of the world in a battle between the sky, land and sea, and quite possibly the most ambitious composition in the entire Dio catalog. It probably took me about 20 listens to wrap my brain around it, but it was well worth the effort. I used to think of songs by Elf like "Nevermore" to be the outliers of their repertoire, but this mini-opera made me realize that this was way more than a simple bar band, and frankly I'm surprised that they were even able to work something like this into the set. Most of the other pre-first album live shows are dominated by cover material, but the Beacon set stands atop them all. And even though the recording isn't in the greatest condition, compared to some of the other extant shows, it is actually in decent shape.
Anyway, don't take my word for it. If you like Dio's music, check out padavona.com, which has compiled the Dio story from the Red Caps through the demise of Elf in 1975, when Ritchie Blackmore, of the same band that did so much for Elf, absorbed them into Rainbow and dismissed all of them except Dio following the first album. As an added bonus, the website has free downloads of almost all of the pre-Elf material, including this album. Go check it out!
RIP DIO
ReplyDelete